[ubuntu-uk] Random lock ups in Jaunty

[Vinothan Shankar]

Barry Titterton wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-10-08 at 16:53 +0100, Vinothan Shankar wrote:
>> Barry Titterton wrote:
>>> Has anyone experienced random hard lock ups since upgrading to Jaunty?
>>>
>>> I am running Jaunty on an elderly Toshiba S1800 laptop (1GHz P3 with
>>> 512M of ram)and since upgrading to Jaunty last August I have been
>>> getting random hard lock ups; the cursor vanishes off the screen and the
>>> laptop becomes completely unresponsive. It can happen after five minutes
>>> or five hours, once or several times per day. I have not been able to
>>> find a key combination (Ctrl+Alt+Del etc) that will do anything; the
>>> mains button is the only option. The problem does not seem to be linked
>>> to any particular software as I have had two lock ups while only the
>>> desktop has been active. The common factor is that they only occur while
>>> I am moving the cursor across the screen. I do not think it is a
>>> hardware problem as the laptop ran Intrepid for six months with no
>>> problems, except for the traditional Toshiba over heating which always
>>> resulted in the machine shutting itself down rather than locking up.
>>>
>>> I have Googled this but have not found anyone with exactly the same
>>> symptoms. I am hanging on to see if Karmic will solve the problem before
>>> reverting to Intrepid. Does anyone have any suggestions?
>>>
>>> Barry
>> I had an issue quite recently with Jaunty locking up to the extent that
>> ctrl+alt+1 wouldn't frop to a text terminal, and ctrl+alt+backspace
>> wouldn't restart the X server even though I disabled DontZap...  I was
>> still able to alt+sysrq+REISUB, but that's not something I wanted to do...
>>
>> It seemed to be a problem with window managers.  I tried Enlightenment
>> and it became stable, so I'm sticking with E for now.  I don't know if
>> it's relevant, but you may want to see if you get the same issue if you
>> install and use E16 (or E17, but that requires adding another repo and
>> key, which you mayb not want to do...)
>>
>> E is also a _lot_ lighter than GNOME, and E17 at least provides most of
>> its features despite being a window manager rather than a desktop
>> environment.
>>
>> Hope that helps, even though it's slightly tangential.
>>
>> Vin
>>
> Thanks Vin,
> 
> This all sounds quite scary for a newbie like me. Can you please explain
> what Enlightenment is, and how I go about installing it?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Barry
Barry,
What I did is probably not the best method for new users, though giving
it a go can't do any harm.  The best way to see if it will help you
would be as follows:
-Install the "e16" package.  You can do this with Synaptic or by running
"sudo aptitude install e16" in a terminal.
-log out
-at the login screen, select options->settings and choose "Enlightenment
(GNOME)" or similar.
-log in
-don't set it as default this time.
-things will look slightly different, but should be familiar.

See how things go.  If the crashes still occur, you can remove E16 with
"sudo aptitude remove e16".

As for what Enlightenment is, it's... complex.  On linux (and many other
unix-like) systems, there are several layers to the graphical desktop.
There's the X server, which provides a framework for drawing to the
screen, there's the applications, which you use, and between them is the
window manager.  Enlightenment is a window manager.  Window managers
handle the actual display of windows, moving them around, and so on.
However, Enlightenment is also a bit like a Desktop Environment, which
provides a window manager and a set of tools and apps.  The desktop
environment you're probably using right now is GNOME.

Hope that helps...
vin